Affective and physiological factors predicting maternal response to infant crying

This study evaluated physiological, affective, and perceptual factors hypothesized to predict how quickly 45 primiparous mothers of 7–9-month-old infants would respond to non-distressed infant crying. Aversiveness ratings of the non-distressed cries of one's “own” infant and physiological reactivity to one's “own” infant crying accounted for a significant amount of the variance in a Cox proportional hazards regression analysis of speed of response. These findings suggest that mothers who have strong affective and physiological responses to non-distressed infant cries may be more likely to respond indiscriminately to attention-seeking infant behaviors.